A common approach in circuit design to generating an output that is a non-linear function of an input is to use a lookup table (LUT) that stores values of the non-linear function for all inputs expected to be encountered by the circuitry. In the event that the number of discrete inputs expected to be encountered by the circuitry is very large, the LUT has a correspondingly very large number of entries. Thus the LUT may have a large physical footprint and significant power consumption.
Another approach in circuit design to generating an output that is a non-linear function of an input is to implement complex mathematics, for example, a Taylor series, the operation of which may take hundreds of clock cycles to generate the output.